The Queen In The Mirror
by Detafo
Summary: Jemima sees a queen that looks exactly like her in the mirror...what's going on? anthro-CATS fic


The Queen in the Mirror  
  
Risty Maskell  
  
Disclaimer: Don't own the cats...just play with them to give my sick and twisted little mind some stupid ideas.  
  
Summary: Jemima sees a girl in the mirror...who is she? This is an anthro- cats fic.  
  
*~*~*~*  
  
Jemima Tabbycat looked around her room with a sigh of boredom. It was untidy, as usual, but she could not be bothered to tidy it up, even though her mother had been after her to do so. Her friends were always going on about how pretty it was and how lucky she was to have a room of her own. Little did they know, she thought gloomily. Her eyes wondered over the bleached silver-oak fittings: The built-in wardrobe, the desk, the bookshelves and the stand that held her stereo and television set, and moved on the gracious lines of her white four- poster bed that seemed almost to float on the thick scarlet wall-to-wall carpet. She went slowly to the window and gazed down at the busy street below. From this height, the cars and people looked like large mechanical toys moving jerkily and without purpose. Oh, what she would give to be away from all this, away from the city! Right away in the country. She slipped easily into her favourite day dream - a big farm in the country with her own horse, and a dog, and rabbits, and lots and lots of space to roam around in, and - oh, everything! Roaming wild and free all day long with the animals ...A horn honked outside and the dream shattered. Again she sighed heavily. Here it was, the beginning of the summer holidays , and all she had to look forward to was a measly fortnight in France with her parents. She was almost sorry that school was finally over - not that she liked school that much, but at least it was something to do.  
  
She put another CD in the stereo and continued her restless ramble about the room. Coming to the dressing table with it's glass top and white flounced frill, she stopped before it and, propping her head in her hands, gazed moodily into the mirror. She had made a fuss about it when her mother had put it in the room, but secretly she rather liked it. It had been one of the 'heirlooms' she had inherited from her great-aunt and namesake, Aunt Jemima, and it did not quite 'go' with the rest of the room, being an antique, shield-shaped, swing-mirror, standing on it's little stand in which there were three small velvet-lined drawers where she kept her most cherished possessions.  
  
Every time she looked at it she would think of Aunt Jemima, who had been incredibly old but who had always interested her with stories about her long-gone youth on a farm in Kent. What especially interested young Jemima were the stories her great-aunt used to tell about her own grandmother, who had lived on the very same farm way back in the 1830s. She too, had been a Jemima, and had had a twin sister called Sillabub to whom something terrible had happened. It had been a very long time before young Jemima had managed to find out what that terrible thing was, because whenever her great-aunt got to that part some grown-up - usually her own mother - would break in with, 'Now I'm sure you don't want to go into all that, Aunt Jemima,' and their warning glances were enough to tell her that it was something they did not want her to know about. She had imagined all sorts of horrible things so, when at last she had got Aunt Jemima all to herself and had heard the story, she'd been quite disappointed.  
  
'Oh,' said Aunt Jemima vaguely, 'about poor Sillabub? Yes, well she went quite mad when she was a young girl and had to spend the rest of her life shut up in the farm attic where no one could see her. THey didn't know what to do with mad people in those days, you see, and it was a terrible disgrace to have one in the family.' 'What made her go mad?' Jemima asked with interest. Her great-aunt shrugged. 'My grandmother never knew for sure. She thought maybe it was because their stepmother was to hard on Sillabub, wha was a very dreamy kind of girl and who wasn't very helpful about the farm. Anyway, one summer's day Sillabub started to act very strangely; she pretended she was Jemima and talked about all kinds of crazy things like talking boxes and wheels that sang songs, and even about men flying about in the sky. It got so bad that they sent the real Jemima, my grandmother away for a while, and when she came back, poor Sillabub was chained up in the atticand she was never allowed to see her again, even though they were twins - and identical twins at that...' Oh yes, Jemima sorely missed Aunt Jemima and her stories, but the old lady had died a few months ago and had left her some very nice things.  
  
The door opened and her mother's face appeared around the crack. 'Jemima, do turn down that CD player! We'll have the neighbors complaining again!' The head swivelled and took in the untidy state of the room. 'And for goodness sake, tidy this mess up, will you? It's the third time I've spoken to you about it.' The voice was pained. 'All right,' Jemima said sullenly. Her mother sighed and the door closed with an exasperated click. 'Drat the neighbors!' Jemima resumed her former position and stared dismally into the mirror. 'Oh how heavenly it must have been to live on a farm, away from everybody!' Her own sad face stared back at her, the long red, black, tan and white hair hanging forward and slightly shadowing its pallor. Then she felt a thrill of amazement , for while the face was the same, the whole room behind it was quite different. She glanced quickly over her shoulder to see if her eyes were playing tricks with her, but there was her own room, just the same as it always was. She looked back at the mirror, and the other room was still there - cream walls with great black beams showing in them, and dark, heavy furniture, including a large four-poster bed with a patchwork quilt. And there was a window where no window exhisted in her room; a window of small, diamond shaped panes which stood open to show the leaves of a great oak tree dancing in the summer breeze, and there was a door of black oak with a latch instead of a nob on it.  
  
Jemima took each detail in slowly. How could this be? Here she was looking at her reflection in a strange room! Then she noticed with a shock that while the face was the same, the dress was quite different. The girl in the mirror was wearing a shapeless long dress of some kind of checked cotto, with stupid-looking puffed sleeves out of which her arms stuck like sticks. Jemima glanced down at her own stylish nylon blouse and neat denim skirt, then back to the mirror. 'Who are you?' she whispered through dry lips. 'Why is everything suddenly so different?' The girl's face - her own face - came a little closer. 'Oh I'm so glad you've finally seen me; that you've said something!' The voice was high and thin and as clear as a mountain stream. 'Now we can talk. Now I can find out about all those wonderful things you have that I can see from here. I have been dying to know about them.' She gave a delighted laugh that tinkled like a fairy bell. 'What talks we'll be able to have now!' 'But... where are you?' Jemima stammered. 'Why, on Pear Tree Farm, of course, where I have always been.' The tinkly laughter broke out again. 'And I know who you are; there's only one person in the world who looks exactly like me, so you're Jemima. Don't you know me, silly? I'm Sillabub!' Thrills went up and down Jemima's spine. 'The farm - the old farm! You're actually on it?' 'Of course.'  
  
Jemima looked very carefully at her look-alike, thinking of the sad story she had been told. She certainly didn't look mad, and besides, behind her was the enchanting prospect of the farm. Sillabub would be able to tell her all about it. 'Well, I'm not your Jemima,' she said cautiously, 'but I think I know what has happened. We are both of us caught in a Time Warp - that must be it!' (She was a great fan of Star Trek, so knew all about such things.) 'I don't care who you say you are, Jemima, or what we're caught in, just so long as we can be friends and you can tell me all about those exciting things,' Sillabub said eagerly. 'I do know one thing though,' Jemima went on. 'We'll have to keep this a deadly secret between us. It would never do if anyone else found out.' 'No indeed!' Sillabub made a face and shivered. 'Why, my stepmother is so strict and nasty - well, she'd probably smash this glass if she thought I was having and fun.'  
  
So began their strange, looking-glass friendship. Jemima's parents could hardly believe the change in her; instead of complaining all the time as she usually did in the holiday, she seemed perfectly content to stay in her room, and had almost to be puched out of the flat to get some fresh air. 'She really is becoming much more grown-up,' Her mother said proudly, and as a reward gave her a lovely gold locket with her birthstone set in the middle of it.  
  
As for Jemima, she could hardly wait to get back to her room and the mirror, and to hear all the marvellous things about the farm. She would get quite cross with Sillabub who, after a while, would always say: 'I've talked enough. Now you tell me about your wonderful life.' And she could not understand why Sillabub was so impressed by very ordinary things like having a bed all to oneself, and light whenever one needed it, or music at the touch of a switch. 'Imagine! Music whenever you want it - what bliss! I do love it so, and there is none here on the farm, none at all,' Sillabub would say sadly. But most of all it was her television set that really enchanted Sillabub, who could not see enough of it and who made Jemima very angry when she wanted to watch it instead of talking. She got so fed up with Sillabub's constant pleas to see it that she would leave it on when she was not in the room, so that Sillabub could watch. She was roundly scolded by her mother for wasting electricty, but she still went on doing it.  
  
On her part, although she never tired of hearing about the two riding- horses and the dogs and the rabbits, Jemima became aware that farm life was not always nice as she had imagined. Often when she hurried to the mirror Sillabub would not be there, and when she did come she would be tired and cross. 'I've been working,' she would say irritably. 'That's all there ever is to do here - work, work, work!' Her hands were always red and raw and quite ugly, but Jemima was too polite to say so. She found to her surprise that Sillabub was quite ignorant about even the simplest things. 'Don't they teach you anything in school,' she said crossly, one day when Sillabub seemed even denser than usual. 'School?' echoed Sillabub. 'I don't go to school. That's just for boys. Though my grandmother did teach me how to make the alphabet and sign my name on a sampler of needlework - and I know my figures,' she said proudly. 'I can add! You mean you go to school just like a boy, all the time?' 'Except for holidays,' Jemima agreed. But it isn't any fun stuck in a stuffy old classroom every day. I hate it.You're lucky not to be bothered with it.'  
  
But the more they talked, the more they became envious of each other's life and unhappy with their own; especially Sillabub, who would lapse into a gloomy silence and gaze longingly into Jemima's room. One day when she was doing this, Jemima cast around in her mind for something new to talk about. She opened one of the velvet-lined drawers under the mirror and held up her new locket. 'Look what my mother gave me,' she said. Sillabub brightened up. 'Oh, it's just beautiful,' she gasped, and reached for it. For a second a small misty hand appeared, and suddenly there was the locket on the otehr side of the mirror, with Sillabub laughing and twirling it in the air. 'Hey!' Said Jemima. 'You've taken my locket. Give it back!'  
  
Sillabub stopped laughing, and a look of wild hope came into her face. 'Jemi,' she whispered. 'It did pass through. And if it can, maybe we can, too! Oh wouldn't that be fun! I could get into your room and play with all those lovely things, and you could come here and play with the animals - even ride the horses, if you like.' 'Well, I don't know,' Jemima said dubiously. 'Do you think it would work?' 'Why not? Let's see if I can give the locket back...' Again a misty outline appeared, and there was the locket gleaming on the glass top. 'See, Jemi! I believe we could. Let's try it You put your fingers to mine on the glass and when I say "Go", we'll both take two steps forward.'  
  
The idea had begun to excite Jemima. 'All right,' she said eagerly, then another thought struck her. 'But wait a moment! What about our clothes? We'd look pretty weird to anyone else. I mean, what would my mother say if she came in and saw you in that cotton sack thing.'  
  
Sillabub thought for a minute and chuckled. 'Then we'll take our clothes off, and when we get to the other side we'll dress in one another's. Then, when we're ready to come back, we'll change again.' Jemima's heart pounded with excitement. 'Right,' she whispered, and started to undress a bit shamefacedly, her fingers trembling nervously. At last they faced one another, giggling self-consciously at the sight. Sillabub, two spots of high colour in her pale cheeks, stretched out her hands. Jemi did the same and took a step forward. For a second she seemed enveloped in in an icy mist, where her sight blurred and her senses numbed, then she was standing in that other room, shivering with cold and fear, but excited beyond belief.  
  
Without waiting to dress herself, she ran to the leaded windows, through which drifted the scent of hay and the sounds of summer. She just had to see if everything was as Sillabub had said it would be. Sure enough, there was the paddock and the two horses, the grey and the brown, standing head to tail and lazily swishing away the flies. There was an old black and white sheepdog lying in the shade of the barn, and a white rabbit hopping around a small hutch. So absorbed was she that she paid no attention to voice from below that was calling on an ever increasing note of anger: 'Sillabub! Sill-ah-bub!'  
  
She ran back to the mirror. 'Oh Sillabub, it's every bit as wonderful as you said...' She began, then stopped dead. The shield-shaped glass with its three little drawers stood on a dark oak table, but it did not reflect, as she expected it to, her own cosy room. Instead, the dark outlines of the farm furniture loomed behind her and - worse - there was no sign of Sillabub anywhere.  
  
As she stood there in mounting fear and puzzlement, the dark shape of a stern-faced woman in black appeared in the doorway, crying, 'Sillabub, you lazy good-for-nothing! How many times have I got to call my lungs out before...' She stopped short in her scolding as she saw Jemima crouching naked before the mirror. 'Now what are you up to, you fiendish girl?' She cried, storming into the room. 'What is the meaning of this wicked nakedness? Wait till I tell your papa of this!' Jemima cringed back against the traitorous mirror. 'I'm not Sillabub,' she wimpered, her heart pounding with terror, 'I'm Jemima, and I want to go home...'  
  
The strange disappearance of Jemima Tabbycat remains a mystery. No one - least of all the police, who were eventually called in - could explain how a girl could disappear completely from a sixth-floor flatin a large London block; particularly one who apparently was not wearing any of her clothes. At least, this was according to her distracted mother, who had been in the living-room of the flat all the time and swore her daughter never left it, clothed or unclothed.  
  
Nor could they explain why the clothes which she had last been seen wearing were found crumpled in an untidy heap before the dressing table, nor why there appeared to be on them, the print of a small, dusty hand, while beside them wasa large mound of dust, which had been scattered in a fine film over everything when the door had been opened. Perhaps the most amazing thing of all was that the mirror on the dressing- table - which, Jemima's mother had tearfully maintained to the sceptical police, had always been kept bright and silver as the day it was made - was all blotched and dark, so that no reflection of anykind could be seen in it.  
  
After a while people gave the whole thing up as an insoluble mystery, but they all said it was just to bad for poor Jemima, wherever she had got to. How right they were! 


End file.
